Indo Sumerian Seals Deciphered

Description

The Indo Sumerian Seals Deciphered

By L.A. Waddell

The author's expertise and knowledge of the Sumerian language helped to hasten the early decoding of the Indus Valley seals.

Excerpt from Preface:

A striking example of the invaluable practical use of these Indian Epic king-lists in recovering the true and original form of the names and titles of Sumerian kings is furnished by its preservation of the kings' names of the First Dynasty of the Phoenicians, which founded the Indus Valley colony and some of whose seals are figured. This dynasty, hitherto considered the first dynasty of the Early Sumerians, and founded by the famous 'Ur-Nina,' was so great, that its galaxy of inscribed monuments, sculptures, seals, and other works of art and craft, and massive building, temples and storehouses, unearthed at Telloh ('Lagash') the Pompeii of Early Mesopotamian antiquity', by M. de Sarzec during a quarter of a century , from 1877 to 1900 still forms the chief basis of our knowledge of the Early Sumerians. And it is actually taken as such by Professor Langdon in his recent historical sketch of the Sumerians in the Cambridge Ancient History, no further back than in 1923.

Nevertheless, a few months later, in the same year, that Assyriologist, on finding a legendary list of Mesopotamian kings written by credulous priest of petty and supposed alien dynasty at Isin, over a thousand years ago after the epoch 'Ur-Nina,' and purporting to give a complete list of the kings with their regnal years back to 241,000 years before the Flood, accepts such a sem-fabulous list seriously in preference to the sober testimony of the contemporary records of the historical Sumerian kings on their own monuments. And, merely because he could not find in this Isin list either the name 'Ur-Nina,' or those of the rest of his dynasty, or indeed of nearly all the other historical Sumerian kings, including the famous and prolific emperor Gudea, whose existing monuments make up nearly the sum-total of known Sumerian history, he throws over all these solidly-known historical kings with their monuments, and declares that they were mere imposters in calling themselves 'kings' and dynasties -- solely because he could not find them in his Isin list! And in the extraordinary conclusion Professor Sayce also has agreed.

But other Assyriologists may now be reassured. That interference from the Isin list is merely 'a mare's nest.' Not only are 'Ur-Nina' and his dynasty all there, I find, but they are made even in this Isin list the first of all 'human' Sumerian dynasties in Mesopotamia, as we shall find through the Indian king-lists, though their name and titles were not recognized by the professors, mainly through having 'restored' the names mostly with the wrong phonetic values. And thus one at least of the several extra thousands of years which these scholars have generously added to the date of the Sumerian in Mesopotamia, before Ur-Nina's epoch, on the strength of their reading of this list, has now got to be removed again.

'Sumerian,' of course, is not found written on any of these seas, for this is merely another of those misleading label which Assyriologists have arbitrarily affixed to this Aryan race. It has never once been found employed by these people themselves, nor has the word ever been found in any 'Sumerian' inscription or document, yet the public have been led, or rather misled, to believe that it was the genuine name of this pre-eminently civilized ancient Aryan people.